1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a graphical user interface to a test as a collection of correlated network-related measurements on a distributed network troubleshooting system. More particularly, the present invention is directed to a user interface allowing a user to add measurements from different network analysis devices into a test so that those measurement results can be visually correlated.
2. Description of the Related Art
FIG. 1 is a diagram of a conventional distributed networking problem domain in which a plurality of network analysis agents (network troubleshooting agents) 20a-n, 22a-n, and 24a-n (NAs) provided on networks 26a-n (network 26), measure how the network 26 performs as network devices (computers) 28a-n perform their respective jobs (e.g., data communication) on the network 26.
In FIG. 1, as an example, the network 26a is an Internet Protocol (IP) network, the networks 26b and 26f are telephony networks, and networks 26c, 26d and 26f are other data networks. The network analysis agents 20a and 20b are telephony network analyzers (TNAs), the network analysis agent 22a tracks remote monitoring (RMON) data, and the network analysis agents 24a and 24b are network analyzers (NA) providing protocol vitals as a measurement.
A measurement is something being measured on the network 26. For example, a measurement may determine the amount of IP traffic or voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) traffic on a packet network. Generally, a measurement represents a plurality of related, measured variables. For example, a measurement of VOIP traffic might be based on related variables, such as packet jitter, packet delay and packet loss. The concept of a measurement is well known.
Network analysis agents 20, 22 and 24 are used to perform measurements. The network analysis agents 20, 22, and 24 can be homogeneous (i.e., same type and/or by same manufacturer) or heterogeneous (i.e., different types and/or by different manufacturers). Network analysis agents are often specialized for performing particular measurements. Moreover, a single network analysis can often perform multiple measurements. Network analysis agents are well known, such as those available from Agilent Technologies, Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., assignee of the present application.
However, in conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems, one network-related measurement (measurement) is run on one network analysis agent, and another measurement is run on another network analysis agent, and so on. Accordingly, conventionally the network related measurements are performed in individual network segments. In the context of troubleshooting a distributed network, a network can be logically segmented based upon network nodes through which connections are managed, such a telephone switch in case of a telephony network. Therefore, typically a network analysis agent is provided at each network segment, such that troubleshooting between two locations on the network may require running at least one measurement at each network segment, and, thus, requiring separate analysis of corresponding measurement results.
For example, to solve a network problem between the San Francisco telephones 28b and the email server 28d, the data of the San Francisco telephone network analyzers (TNA) 20b and the Phoenix RMON 22a must be correlated. However, the conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems fail to provide such a correlation of one or more network analysis agent measurements from two or more network analysis agents, because in the conventional distributed network troubleshooting system, a user has to look at the data for the measurement from the San Francisco TNA 20b in one window, then in a different window look at the data from the Phoenix RMON 22a, and then mentally troubleshoot based upon the information in the two windows, which is difficult and very inefficient, and in particular not possible to mentally analyze the information from the two windows over a time line. Of course, if more than two agent measurements are being analyzed, mental analysis is not effective.
More particularly, with the conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems, when a customer is dissatisfied with something happening on the network, such as connectivity failure, slow performance, etc, the customer calls the service provider. If, for example, the customer is in San Francisco and getting garbled conversations with a phone in Denver, the service provider deploys network analysis agents on the network at various network segments (i.e., the set of network segments) between San Francisco and Denver. Therefore, the service provider has to look at multiple network segments to see which network segment is causing the problem or which combination of segments are causing the problem, and the service provider must analyze all of the data from the deployed network analysis agents in the network segments to come up with a way to troubleshoot and solve the problem.
Although there are some distributed network troubleshooting systems that allow running measurements on multiple devices, the problem with such conventional systems is that the system presents a separate display window or a separate graphical user interface (GUI) per measurement. So there is no way that a user can look at measurement data from different devices all in one user interface. Therefore, the conventional distributed network troubleshooting system fails to correlate one or more network analysis agent measurements from two or more network analysis agents.
Further, the conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems fail to provide a way a user can control configuration and execution of the network analysis agent measurements at two or more network analysis agents from a central place, because conventionally a user basically look at one measurement in one display window, configure the measurement and go to another display window to open and configure another measurement.
More particularly, although some conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems allow a user to look at measurement data remotely on a remote system, so that the user could bring up (open) a window to look at the San Francisco data and then bring up another window to look at the Denver data, these conventional distributed network troubleshooting systems fail to provide a way to dynamically set up a test that contains those two measurements to do the correlation for the user.